Senior AI Engineer

Purpose of the role

To design, develop and improve software, utilising various engineering methodologies, that provides business, platform, and technology capabilities for our customers and colleagues.

Accountabilities

• Development and delivery of high-quality software solutions by using industry aligned programming languages, frameworks, and tools. Ensuring that code is scalable, maintainable, and optimized for performance.
• Cross-functional collaboration with product managers, designers, and other engineers to define software requirements, devise solution strategies, and ensure seamless integration and alignment with business objectives.
• Collaboration with peers, participate in code reviews, and promote a culture of code quality and knowledge sharing.
• Stay informed of industry technology trends and innovations and actively contribute to the organization’s technology communities to foster a culture of technical excellence and growth.
• Adherence to secure coding practices to mitigate vulnerabilities, protect sensitive data, and ensure secure software solutions.
• Implementation of effective unit testing practices to ensure proper code design, readability, and reliability.

Vice President Expectations

• To contribute or set strategy, drive requirements and make recommendations for change. Plan resources, budgets, and policies; manage and maintain policies/ processes; deliver continuous improvements and escalate breaches of policies/procedures.
• If managing a team, they define jobs and responsibilities, planning for the department’s future needs and operations, counselling employees on performance and contributing to employee pay decisions/changes. They may also lead a number of specialists to influence the operations of a department, in alignment with strategic as well as tactical priorities, while balancing short and long term goals and ensuring that budgets and schedules meet corporate requirements.
• If the position has leadership responsibilities, People Leaders are expected to demonstrate a clear set of leadership behaviours to create an environment for colleagues to thrive and deliver to a consistently excellent standard. The four LEAD behaviours are: L – Listen and be authentic, E – Energise and inspire, A – Align across the enterprise, D – Develop others.
• OR for an individual contributor, they will be a subject matter expert within own discipline and will guide technical direction. They will lead collaborative, multi-year assignments and guide team members through structured assignments, identify the need for the inclusion of other areas of specialisation to complete assignments. They will train, guide and coach less experienced specialists and provide information affecting long term profits, organisational risks and strategic decisions.
• Advise key stakeholders, including functional leadership teams and senior management on functional and cross functional areas of impact and alignment.
• Manage and mitigate risks through assessment, in support of the control and governance agenda.
• Demonstrate leadership and accountability for managing risk and strengthening controls in relation to the work your team does.
• Demonstrate comprehensive understanding of the organisation functions to contribute to achieving the goals of the business.
• Collaborate with other areas of work, for business aligned support areas to keep up to speed with business activity and the business strategies.
• Create solutions based on sophisticated analytical thought comparing and selecting complex alternatives. In-depth analysis with interpretative thinking will be required to define problems and develop innovative solutions.
• Adopt and include the outcomes of extensive research in problem solving processes.
• Seek out, build and maintain trusting relationships and partnerships with internal and external stakeholders in order to accomplish key business objectives, using influencing and negotiating skills to achieve outcomes.

All colleagues will be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence and Stewardship – our moral compass, helping us do what we believe is right. They will also be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Mindset – to Empower, Challenge and Drive – the operating manual for how we behave.

Join us at Barclays as a Senior AI Engineer to set the technical vision and drive the development of advanced AI capabilities, including Agentic AI, across key Analytics and Machine Learning initiatives. This role is critical for architecting complex solutions, guiding squads delivering Trade AI and Client Servicing use cases, and avoiding the higher costs and diminished strategic alignment associated with relying solely on MSP support.

This role is based in Glasgow/London.

To be successful as a Senior AI Engineer, you should have experience with:

• Expert Python & AI Engineering Frameworks- Deep proficiency in Python and modern AI frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LangGraph, HuggingFace), including vector‑retrieval tooling.
• Agentic AI & Orchestrated Reasoning- Hands‑on experience designing and deploying agentic AI workflows, tool‑using agents, and multi‑step reasoning systems in production environments.
• RAG Architecture & Implementation- Practical experience designing and implementing Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG) solutions, including embeddings, chunking, retrieval optimisation, and safety/guardrails.
• Production‑Grade AI Application Engineering- Proven ability to build and operate full‑stack AI applications (backend, APIs, modern front‑end frameworks such as React) with strong focus on reliability, scalability, security, and observability.
• Cloud‑Native AI Deployment on AWS- Experience deploying AI solutions using AWS services such as Bedrock, SageMaker, Lambda, API Gateway, and vector‑enabled datastores (e.g., OpenSearch, pgvector).

Some other highly valued skills may include:

• End‑to‑End MLOps / LLMOps- Experience with model lifecycle management, evaluation frameworks, monitoring, and CI/CD for AI workloads.
• Technical Leadership & Mentorship- Experience leading junior engineers, driving design reviews, and setting engineering best practices.
• Model Fine‑Tuning Expertise- Understanding of fine‑tuning techniques and when to apply fine‑tuning vs. RAG vs. hybrid strategies.
• Enterprise‑Grade Governance & Security- Experience designing AI systems within regulated or compliance‑heavy environments.
• Cost‑Optimised AI Architecture- Ability to design scalable, efficient AI systems through model selection, inference optimisation, and resource‑efficient deployment.

You may be assessed on the key critical skills relevant for success in role, such as risk and controls, change and transformation, business acumen strategic thinking and digital and technology, as well as job-specific technical skills.